Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Just watched the show 'It's A Wonderful Life'. I know, it's a Christmas show, but I never had a chance to watch it earlier, so being that there is a holiday here today I thought I'd take the time. The holiday you ask (or didn't) is Hero's Day in Rwanda, so no school. It was nice to have a day break, as we have been very busy with registering new students for the class that starts Feb. 13, 2017. We've had over 50 people come to inquire about the sewing school, and we have changed our minds on accepting only 24 students to accepting 30! (and updated now Feb. 4th - we have accepted 32 students!)Yikes - big step as we had to make room for more machines in the classroom and move the big cutting table to another room, and move Production over to another room. All's good though and everyone is working hard to get ready, and pay school fees. It's very exciting, so having a day break is good.

I was looking through my pictures and realized that I hadn't posted for some time.

Being we have slow internet I have decided against showing the pictures. grrrr!Pictures below.

I got 'hives' on the 22nd of December - which have decided to last the full recommended 6 weeks.Update - ate some more pork (which we figured was the cause the first time and I now have more hives! Definitely the pork!!!)

We fixed the shower base in the bathroom in our house, during our Christmas 'break'. Made it a cement floor with broken tiles and drain. Looks really good and even works!

Our papaya trees are producing even in this dry season. We will have a lot in time. We enjoyed a bunch of yellow bananas from our garden.

I made curtains for the kitchen, nice medium yellow, now we have full privacy on all the windows.

The door in the gate at the sewing school was short, and we had to bend whenever we entered. The gate was taken off and 4 guys "walked" it down to the welder to fix. It was a struggle to get back on the hinges but they were successful, and now we still duck when we enter - I guess we'll get over the amount of times we hit our heads and realize we don't have to duck anymore. It's a nice improvement.

A few trees were cut down that were too close to the outside of our property fence. We have a chair go missing. Gave the firewood to a needy family.

A bird build a nest in our passion fruit vines and laid 3 eggs. They are hatched and they now fill the nest. I'm sure it won't be long and they will fly away.

Theo has been busy with making school uniforms for the sponsored children. He loves to sew and has the time right now to do that before the classes start in February.

I've been busy with 4 grads in Production. We've made aprons, shoulder bags, small bags, pencil cases, makeup bags, cash wallets and jewellery pouches, and plans for other items. We have a display in our store we opened in December. We've been busy with selling uniform fabric and other supplies since the children started school on January 23 too.

We were able to register 15 sponsored children this year with the funds that have come in. It is exciting to see the faces of those that can go to school and learn. Parents are more than thankful for those of you who have donated money for this cause. We are so thankful too, and it is a joy to be serving the people here who so need the help in this way. I wish you all could have seen the face of the one boy who came to pick up his uniform. After he put it on and it fit so well, he was just beaming and was so thankful for it. To put a smile on someone's face is so rewarding.

Well sorry about the pictures. Some I've put on FB so you can see them there. Maybe I'll add them later.

Looking forward to a busy, but fun February.

God has been good and we enjoy serving him here.

PICTURES:

Production

Hives

Shower stall before

Papaya

Blue Heron

New curtains

Replacing gate

New door

One Advanced Class student - shirt and pants

Bird nest in Passion Fruit - the following day a hawk came and at the babies who had filled the nest.